Central to the Western path of spirituality is the Grail
Quest, derived from the Celtic myth of the Goddess
and the magical cauldron. In some versions, Parsifal
is the knight who wins the Grail. In a lesser-known
narrative, Parsifal's son, Lohengrin,becomes the
"Knight of the Swan," a motif that indicates future
permutations of the Grail mythos.
(Lohengrin, by Ernst Fuchs)

Gaia-Sophia: Compound term suggested for
the divine source of the wisdom innate to the human species, literally "Earth-Goddess-Wisdom". See Insane and Inhumane.

The term Sophia, "Wisdom," comes directly from Gnostic cosmology,
redeveloped in the Gaia Mythos. Sophia is the name of an Aeon in
the Pleroma, the company of divine powers at the galactic center,
who plunges beyond the boundaries of the god-realm and becomes "materialized"
as a planet, the Earth. Gnostic cosmology is unique (as far as I
know) in providing background on the identity of the earth goddess,
Gaia, previous to her terrestrial embodiment.

Gaia-Sophia Principle The
primary assumption (belief, if you will) of Metahistory Quest.

Essentially, this principle states that the human
species receives from the intelligence of the Earth a
special dose of self-corrective savvy (sapience). The wisdom endowment
(as it may
be called) is the
source of our instinctual capacities as well as our ethical
sense. This precious endowment, called nous by Gnostics,
must be cultivated in order for us to realize it. Failing to cultivate
it, we risk becoming
something less than human. Unlike other species, who are
more closely bound to their instinctual patterns, we have huge
latitude to wander
and err, but this also allows us to explore, invent, imagine.
We learn by making errors and correcting them, thanks to the self-correcting
element in nous, our
self-monitoring onetic faculty.

The Gaia-Sophia Principle assumes that human intelligence,
being rooted in the Gaia habitat, will evolve into the fullness of
spiritual wisdom (Sophia) by interacting with nature and other species.
Our dependence of animal and plants powers, widely attested in indigenous
traditions, is therefore essential to our sanity and evolution. Hence,
the G-S Principle is closely aligned with the entheogenic
theory of religion. It also resonate with the view of Deep Ecology, especially
the assumption stated by Arne Naess (cited under Pagan
Ethics) that humans
will act morally, doing good by nature, as long as they remain faithful
to nature .

Girardian theory A
brilliant theory of social behavior proposed by cultural
anthropologist Renee Girard, consisting of two key ideas:
mimetic desire and the mechanism of unanimity.

In develoment...

Gnosticism: is notoriously difficult
to define. In 1966 an entire conference was convened in Messina,
Italy, solely for that purpose, but it produced no lasting
result.
Having catalogued no
less then twenty-seven definitions of Gnosis, and added
eight or ten of my
own, I can attest that no single definition is adequate,
for it takes a range of approaches to understand this unique religious
system.

For a concise initial definition of Gnostic spirituality,
I propose: the way
of knowing God through the divine intelligence endowed in humanity by God.
The famous counsel of the Pythian oracle at Delphi, "Know Thyself" might
be expanded into a formula for Gnosis: "Know that within thyself which is
divine, and through it, come to know Divinity". The full array
of notions associated with Gnosticism requires a term-by-term analysis
of
seven definitions that run into each other:

GNOSIS. The word means simply "knowledge",
but of
a special kind. It derives from the root gno-, "to know, cognize, discern".
This Greek verb-root matches the Sanskrit jna-, which carries
the same
meaning. In Buddhism prajna is the "supreme discernment" of
the true nature of reality. Likewise, Gnosis is the knowing of what is
true and real in the ultimate sense. Websters
Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary (1965) gives: "immediate knowledge of spiritual
truth", contrasted to mere belief, unquestioning faith, and
blind acceptance of doctrines prescribed by authorities. In short,
Gnostic spirituality
is an anti-authoritarian path based
on first-hand experience of Divinity. It encourages an
intuitive, i.e., direct, experiential, approach to God. It assumes
the possibility
of revelations from beyond the human realm, but
it requires cognitive training to assess these revelations.
Gnosis is the yoga of intellect that unifies far-seeing mental-mystical
vision with the wisdom of the body. Developing the
hidden powers of the mind/body link to reach beyond the
preset
limits of human knowing is the predilection of the

GNOSTICISM. This is a term in use only since around
1750. The -ism indicates a label invented by scholars. Gnosticism in
this sense is the
historical profile of the Pagan
religious movement, and Gnosis for the method that
uniquely distinguishes the members of that movement. Gnosis is both
a
methodical discipline and the superior insight
acquired through that discipline. Gnosticism is known
through writings produced in the period when it clashed with Christianity,
so there was initially a tendency to assume that Gnosis
(the method) did not exist before that time. Most scholars
now
reject this view, although no scholar has identified
with confidence the remote pre-Christian origins of

GNOSTIC RELIGION. This is what Gnosticism really was
in its own time, on its own terms: a Pagan religious movement of deep
and ancient origins.
Its connection to the Mystery
Religions known to have existed for thousands of years
all over the ancient world will be demonstrated in several chapters.
Testimony from early
Christians who opposed Gnostic religion,
as well as from Pagan philosophers and historians who
were sympathetic to it, indicates that its ultimate origins were Asian.
Close and vivid parallels
between Gnosticism and Buddhism seem
to converge in Bon Po, an Asian wisdom tradition dating
to 18,000 BCE according to a recently revealed secret oral tradition.
Thus, Gnostic religion
may have existed for millennia before it
was turned into

GNOSTIC HERESY, as Gnostic teachings were called by those who opposed them.
Heresy if about having options. Gnosticism was made into a heresy -- i.e., something to be
rejected as false or perverted -- because it presented a set of clear options to the belief
template of Christianity. In the literal sense, to be heretical means "able to choose for
oneself". The first proponents of Christianity wanted to impose
their view unilaterally on the entire world, so they could not tolerate
any competition. Gnosticism challenged emergent
Christian doctrines with a range of opposing views. For
instance,
Gnosticism took ignorance, rather than sin, to be the
fundamental problem facing humanity. In large measure, the persuasion
of Christian ideology depends on the sense of being a
sinner,
someone who needs to be saved. Had the teachings of Gnostic
heresy become widely known and accepted, the Christian plan for
salvation might have collapsed before it got to square
one. There was another threat, as well, for Gnosticism did not merely
contradict
and invalidate Christian doctrines, point blank. In
some cases, it offered a different way of stating those
doctrines. Most importantly, it presented an alternative view of
salvation
that came to be formulated in what may be called

GNOSTIC CHRISTIANITY. This is the set of views found
in some Gnostic texts from Nag Hammadi that present other ways to state
Christian doctrines,
rather than flat-out
refutations of those doctrines. Gnostic religion existed
for millennia, but Gnostic Christianity arose between 200 BC and 400
AD in response
to the heady brew of messianic and apocalyptic
impulses that were fermenting in Asia Minor, Egypt and
Palestine. In the melee of the times, attempts were made to reconcile
or even merge Gnosis
with Judaeo-Christian doctrines. Some
texts from Nag Hammadi were written with the intent to
portray the Christian savior, Jesus Christ, as a Gnostic master, an illuminated
sage,
but other texts are clearly non-Christian
and even blatantly anti-Christian.

The "soft view" of Gnostic heresy highlights the former documents, sometimes called
"Gnostic Gospels" to conflate them with the New Testament. It favors reconciling Gnostic
views with Christian orthodoxy, thus producing a better, kinder, more enlightened, planet-friendly
and feminist-slanted version of Christianity. In the "hard view" Gnosis
cannot and ought not be reconciled with Christian faith.
Essentially and originally, Gnosis is Pagan. Gnostic
Christianity is Pagan religion adapted to an alien or
extraneous scheme. Scholars meticulously distinguish between pre-Christian,
anti-Christian, non-Christian and Christianized texts
in the
complete inventory of surviving Gnostic literature known
to scholars as the

GNOSTIC COPTIC LIBRARY. This consists of the thirteen
Nag Hammadi Codices (NHC), comprising fifty-odd documents, and three
preceding independent
finds: the Berlin, Bruce
and Askew Codices. Few of these texts are complete but
there is, amazingly, enough extant first-hand material to reconstruct
the essential
Gnostic philosophy. For reasons no scholar can
explain, all of this literature appears in Coptic translations
of lost Greek originals. Coptic is a made-up language that emerged in
the first centuries of the Christian Era in Egypt. Used
primarily for monastic libraries, it draws upon the ancient
Egyptian hieroglyphs and Greek loan-words. Unlike Greek, a language whose
grammatical
structure permits elaborate phrasing,
Coptic is elementary to the point of bluntness, yet it
is not without subtleties, either. Both Greek and Coptic terms figure
in the special
terminology used by Gnostics to explain error,
ignorance, deception and the problem of guidance.

GNOSTIC MATERIALS.Upcoming.

golden rule: formula
for social morality proposed independently in China and
Palestine and recorded
in
texts dating from circa 600 BCE.

The rabbi Hillel
was quoted by Jesus,
but the advice he
gave was inverted
to a positive form
that came to be uniquely
attributed to Jesus: Do unto others as you would have
them do unto you. The phrasing of the rule by Hillel is negative:
Do not do unto others what you dont want done
to you.

The inversion attributed
to Jesus presents an utterly
different message: Do unto others as you would have them
do unto you carries the obligation to act
toward others, rather than
the admonition
to refrain from acting. It also implies the belief
that if I do unto others as I would have them do
unto me, they will in turn do unto me as I like. The message here
is spun two ways at once: the obligation to act in a certain way
toward others is imposed, but with it comes the assumption
that others who follow this rule will act toward me as I would like
them to do. In
the assumed reciprocity of these two actions, self-seeking
concern
is factored into the moral equation.

Hillels
pre-Christian
ethic recalls
the daimonic
voice that
counseled Socrates,
always speaking
in the negative,
telling him
when not to
act but not
telling him when
and how to act.

Grail Quest. Forthcoming.

guidance One of the great enigmas of human
experience and a central issue of metahistory. May be conceived
as the equivalent in the human species to navigational instinct in
other species.

In The Territorial Imperative, Robert
Ardrey described the research of zoologist Archie Carr who tagged
thousands of green-backed turtles on a beach in Costa Rica where
they nested in shallow coastal waters, and tracked many of them
to far-off feeding haunts on the coast of Venezuela. In both
locales, the turtles returned to exactly the same beaches and nesting
coves. To do so they had to navigate over thousands of miles
of open, often tumultuous ocean and arrive with pin-point precision. Ardrey
comments that Carrs finding, published in 1965, may be
regarded as sciences last word ­ or dying gasp ­ on the
homing of animals. (135)

Although better known for his sensational thesis
on the origins of human aggression, developed in African Genesis and The Hunting Hypothesis,
Ardrey would better be remembered for his poetic and technically skillful
writing on the homing
instincts of dozens of animals, birds and fishes. His testament
to the navigational faculties inborn to many species leads directly to
the question: Is there an equivalent navigational instinct in homo
sapiens? For his own part, Ardrey would say no: Man is one
species brilliantly equipped ty nature to get himself hopelessly
lost. (134)

Or perhaps not. It could be that the navigational
instinct in the human species does exist, but needs to be triggered
in a certain manner, the way instinctual programs in other species
are triggered by what ethologist, Konrad Lorenz, called the IRM,
Innate Releaser Mechanism. John Bleibtreu explains:

Since Lorenzs original experiments, IRMs
have been discovered operative in numbers of bird and mammalian
behavior sequences. For example, a stick pointed at a nestful of
fledglings will release the gaping, chirping, food-soliciting
behavior of the chicks. Or, if a kite in the shape of a hawks
silhouette is flown head-first over a group of young birds, it will
release fright and escape behaviors. That this is both innate and
highly specific has been proven in various controlled experiments.
The specificity of the releaser is incredible ­ for if the kite it
hauled tail-first instead of head-first over the chicks, they
will not respond with the appropriate behavior. (264)

Bleibtreu comments that in the human species, due
to the way humans developed their capacity to allow part of an
abstraction to represent the whole, symbols and even single words
can operate as IRMs. Citing the example of the crucifix, he says
this single visual object has come to represent an intricately
complex constellation of abstractions, which includes doctrine,
history, philosophy; an entire way of life. (Ibid.) A good many
other examples could be cited to demonstrate how in the human
species a symbol, a word or even a mental abstraction can trigger a
mammalian behavior sequence. As in the animal kingdom, the
specificity of the releaser is incredible. The hammer and sickle
(Soviet flag) triggers a different response from a star and
sickle-shaped moon (Islamic flag).

It could be argued that these examples do not
correlate to a navigational instinct in homo sapiens,
but they might point in the direction of such a faculty. The
power of belief seems to be the operative factor in human nature, innate and highly specific, that
causes human beings to act in a certain way, but the dynamics of belief do
not entirely account
for our sense of moral direction. Is this a placebo effect: I
act as if I am guided simply because I believe myself (imagine myself) to
be guided? If so, the sense of guidance derived from the Bible
and
other traditional sources of religious could be purely illusory.
The enigma remains unsolved. See also ideology.